Internet Business Tutorial, Search Engine Optimization

The Internet has made fundamental changes in how companies of all sizes operate their businesses. Worldwide communications over the World Wide Web has mean business processes have been streamlined: digital automation has meant fewer people can do more work quicker; operating costs have been reduced because of these efficiencies; and better, cost-effective customer service can be provided through electronic mail (e-mail), websites, and digitized interactive voice response (IVR) phone systems.

The Internet and the Web are ever-evolving, and Internet marketing practices over the years have needed to change with them. E-mail marketing, for example, was once seen as the best inexpensive and effective promotion tools until the explosion of unsolicited commercial e-mail ("spam") turned off the Internet masses, changing the face of how legitimate marketers communicate without offending.

Today, the most widely used tools for marketing commercial enterprises are search engine optimization (SEO) (sometimes referred to search engine marketing [SEM]), e-mail marketing, banner advertisements, and tried-and-true networking. Here's an introduction to some of the Internet marketing techniques that can be used to build brands and generate sales.

Search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines have long been a part of the World Wide Web, but it took search engine kingpin Google to make it the most-popular and easiest way to find information on the Web.

It's so easy to find products and services with Google and other top search engines that much recent Internet marketing has focused on ways to get e-commerce sites to appear at or near the top of search results. When a simple keyword search on Google, Yahoo! or MSN can return literally millions of web pages, the difference between being the third listing on the page or the 33rd can mean the difference in tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

For example, a Google keyword search for "doors" turns up 31.7 million web pages. On the first page of 10 results, five are for door retailers. Imagine the advantage they have over the competition that might be 50th, 500th, or 5,000th on that list.

Theories vary on how to optimize a website's keywords to produce the highest position in search engines. Whole Internet marketing companies have spend countless resources trying to crack the mathematical algorithms Google uses to ensure their clients have top search engine placement. You can pay these companies to gain great search-engine ranking results, or you can do it yourself. There are even SEO software titles claiming to make SEO easy, and entire books have been dedicating to helping businesses achieve top search-engine rankings.

Much of the focus in SEO schemes involved the frequency and placement of keywords. Say, for example, you have a website promoting your Nevada-based real estate company. Ideally, you will want to place high in search-engine rankings every time someone does search-engine keyword search for "Nevada real estate" or "real estate in Nevada" or "Nevada Realtors", just to mention three possible keyword combinations.

Placing these keyword variations on your website may help search engines find your website. Whether they will or not depends, in part, on the frequency of your keywords and their density, meaning the total percentage of the entire page that's made up of keywords. Keyword density theories vary, but generally companies strive for a density of about 2 to 10 percent of keywords in their marketing and sales cop